You Are The Light of the World

The Light of the World is much more profound than mere accurate information. It is a Light that illumines the human soul so that we become the Light through His grace.

The famous philosopher Aldus Huxley once wrote: “If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful, and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.”

Huxley wrote “The Perennial Philosophy” in 1945 and suggested that the fundamental wisdom of authentic human reality is common to all religions. An interesting historical note is that he died the same day as C.S. Lewis and President John F. Kennedy. A great little book is written that imagines these three having a conversation after death. It’s called “Between Heaven and Hell” by Peter Kreeft. I highly recommend it!

We humans have always had a bit of a “love/hate” relationship with academics and the temptation of the “ivory tower” reduction of intelligence to a false notion of superiority or elitism. However, the treasures of authentic scholarship are too valuable to dismiss simply because the false scholarship of fadish modernism has plagued our day.

While I would argue that Huxley misses some vital information that would better support his conclusion that Faith focused exclusively on Jesus Christ best sets humans free, I agree with his statement above that humans often prefer the ease of temporary pleasures over the hard work of truly knowing ourselves.

And I would agree that timeless wisdom isn’t subject to the temporary whims of fads of philosophy or moral relativism. There is the Wisdom that stubbornly refuses to be modified by our selfish desires. Fighting against that wisdom only leads to destruction personally and communally. Just look at the chaos that passes itself off as wisdom today, and you can see how destructive a false ideology truly is to human lives.

Look at our lesson today in Matthew 5:14-19:

The Lord said to his disciples, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

The fundamental misunderstanding of the ministry of Jesus is that He came to set up something different than the “Old Testament” idea!

This is wrong.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the “Old Testament” wisdom, and He is the continuity of God's wisdom from “Let there be light” to “Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.”

The wisdom from start to finish is the same, and that wisdom is made flesh and lives among us in the Person of Jesus Christ. He is THE Way, THE Truth, and THE life, and no one comes to God the Father except through Him. This continuity between the First Covenant and the New Covenant inaugurated by Christ is vital to understanding WHO the Church is and who YOU are meant to be!

The message of the Orthodox Faith is that This Wisdom of God, this “Logos” of God, is the Person of Jesus Christ, and Christ has come to go into battle on our behalf to destroy the “enemies” of God’s humans, namely Sin, Death, and Satan.

Jesus Christ does this by perfectly living the Wisdom of God in the very flesh we all share with Him. And then He enters into death, a very horrible and ugly death, so that He can destroy death from the inside. And He confronts that old serpent, the devil, and removes all power from that old Deceiver to enslave us to the slavery of mortality. Jesus Christ is Light, and He destroys darkness so that we no longer stumble and fall, gripped by not being able to SEE the wise way to live.

What does that have to do with wisdom, you may ask?

Well, look at the passage.

Jesus now says we are the light of the world as we embrace Him as the Light. And he goes on to explain that He hasn’t come to destroy any of the wisdom of Moses and the Prophets. On the contrary, He is here to fulfill all that wisdom and personify that wisdom, and now share His light with all of us so we, too, can embrace and be embraced by that wisdom! SO THAT we might be as free and alive as He is! And we can share His Light with all around us so they can be free, too!

Powerfully, one of the implications of this reality is that this wisdom is never subject to the fads of this or that current shallow ideology that might infect our society.

This wisdom means that no matter what might be popular now or widely accepted as “the current thing, "

Christ's wisdom isn’t subject to popular vote or the spirit of the age. It stands above all these shallow winds of human folly and reveals them for their immature sentimentality. His Wisdom also invites us out of the slavery of narcissistic, undisciplined passions fed by our egos into the freedom of passions that have been disciplined and now become the “servants” they were made to be!

Today, as we recall the Feast of the Three Great Hierarchs – St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom, we are confronted with the lives of these three great heroes of the Faith that were meant to be a healing of our rational minds and a lifestyle of experiencing intimacy with God Himself. So, are you tempted to fall into the spirit of the age that questions the wisdom of the Church concerning morality or perspective? Well, you are not alone. The deceiver wants nothing more than for you to ask Normal Orthodoxy's timeless wisdom and morality so that you will be enslaved to the dark passions that destroy. Our Three Hiearchs invite you to embrace a Normal Orthodoxy that sets a man free.

P.S. The three most great luminaries of the Three-Sun Divinity have illumined all of the world with the rays of doctrines divine and true; they are the sweetly-flowing rivers of wisdom, who with godly knowledge have watered all creation in clear and mighty streams: The great and sacred Basil, and the Theologian, wise Gregory, together with the renowned John, the famed Chrysostom of golden speech. Let us all who love their divinely-wise words come together, honoring them with hymns; for ceaselessly they offer entreaty for us to the Trinity.

Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. He is also the founder of Faith Encouraged Ministries and produces the Faith Encouraged Daily Devotional on Substack. Watch the Faith Encouraged YouTube Channel here - https://www.youtube.com/@FaithEncouragedTV